Octopus Tracker vs Flexible
Tracker Check
Compare how much Tracker could have saved over the past year versus a regular energy tariff, using actual daily Octopus Tracker and Flexible prices.
Estimated annual saving
Enter your annual kWh to compare Tracker with Flexible.
Loading extracted price history.
Assumptions
Available price data loads from the public CSV.
Use your actual annual kWh from your bill for the best estimate. Set a fuel to 0 if you only want to check one fuel.
Methods
This tool uses daily tariff messages that I sent to myself with an Apple Shortcut using the Octopus API. The messages included the daily Octopus Tracker and Flexible unit rates for gas and electricity.
Flexible is used here as the comparison tariff because it is likely to be close to the standard variable tariff that a regular customer on Octopus, or another energy supplier, may be defaulted to and often remains on.
I exported a local copy of my Apple Messages database, then extracted the tariff messages from it. Codex was given a prompt to inspect the database, extract the relevant Tracker and Flexible prices, clean the data, generate a public CSV, and build a simple calculator. The prompt was refined during development after discovering that most Apple Messages text was stored in attributedBody rather than message.text.
The calculator compares two estimated annual costs. Tracker uses your annual kWh multiplied by the average Tracker unit rate from the selected price-history period. Flexible uses your annual kWh multiplied by the average Flexible unit rate from the same period.
Standing charges are added separately using the values in the assumptions section. By default, the calculator uses the most recent year of available daily prices to estimate annual costs.
This is an estimate, not a bill-grade calculation. It does not fully account for VAT, regional differences, discounts, tariff changes, payment method differences, or exact daily consumption patterns.
This project was developed with the assistance of Codex.